The purpose of this album, La rondeña del siglo xix de El Murciano a Falla (The 19th-Century Rondeña, from El Murciano to Falla) is to illustrate the evolution of flamenco guitar and Spanish concert guitar styles, drawing on the recent discovery and subsequent analysis of transcriptions of variations on the rondeña (a cante or song-type, with associated guitar accompaniment style) as played by the “vernacular” guitarist of Albaycín (Granada), Francisco Rodríguez Murciano (“El Murciano,” 1795-1848).

Wayne Shorter was 15 when he first wrote and Illustrated his first comic book in blue ballpoint pen. That was in 1949, and Shorter has traveled great distances since, becoming an influential saxophonist, a 10-time Grammy winner and one of the most highly regarded composers in modern jazz. But as any fan of Shorter's can attest, he has held onto his teenage fixation with superheroes and sci-fi, as well as the comic book arts - so it's fitting that his highly anticipated next release, Emanon, released on Blue Note includes an original graphic novel — a cosmic-heroic odyssey written by Shorter with help from the screenwriter Monica Sly, and featuring art by Randy DuBurke — along with three albums of new music.

“Pure and penetrating” was the violin playing of Johann Sebastian Bach according to the tradition of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel: “He fully understood the possibilities of all violin instruments. This is testified by his soli for violin and cello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect to become a good violinist and he could advise nothing better than the violin soli without bass mentioned above.” When Carl Philipp Emanuel addressed these words in a letter to the musicologist and early Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel in 1774, Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin were known to a still manageable, albeit growing circle of enthusiasts.

America’s greatest and most enduring chamber ensemble – the Grammyâ Award-winning Juilliard String Quartet – celebrates its eighth decade with the release of a new Sony Classical recording of music from three centuries by Ludwig van Beethoven, Béla Bartók and Argentinian-American composer Mario Davidovsky.

With the popularization of bossa nova in the early '60s, practically every recording artist had to have at least one bossa nova album. This effort by the Dave Brubeck Quartet is better than most due to the high quality of the compositions, of which the title cut is best-known. The date's two standards ("This Can't Be Love" and "Trolley Song") also fare well on this upbeat session.